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At Home with Phil Harrison

At
GDC 2007, Gamasutra sat down with Sony worldwide studios president Phil
Harrison to discuss his thoughts on the newly announced Home, its similarities (or lack thereof) to Second Life
and Nintendo's Miis, and the value of having talented yet expensive
developers like Dave Jaffe making PS3 downloadable games. After a
slight diversion into a discussion of Turrican, Harrison shares his thoughts on Blu-Ray's importance to the PS3, and the price of the console in Europe and the U.K.

Gamasutra: What made Sony decide to go with PlayStation Home?

Phil
Harrison: It started life on PlayStation 2, actually. It was something
we were working on to create an interactive 3D lobby that would become
a launchpad for a number of online games. But, the PlayStation 2 --
great platform though it is -- was coming up against some technical
limitations in some of the user-created content that we wanted to put
into the space, because we didn't have a hard drive in every PS2, and
we didn't quite have the 3D processing power that we wanted. So, we
thought that this would be better off on PlayStation 3, and we've been
working on it for about two and a half years.

The
decision to do it was to create a rich 3D layer that would sit on top
of or around the existing PlayStation Network platform, without trying
to change that functionality, but just present it in a very immersive
way that would resonate well with our audience and also develop this
conducive opportunity for them too.

GS: So does this supplant the existing PlayStation Store?

PH: No, it's deliberately distinct and separate from the Xross Media Bar in the PlayStation Store.

GS: What has been the influence of Second Life, or Nintendo's Miis, or things like that? Have they influenced your design at all?

PH:
I wouldn't say "influenced." We're obviously aware of some of the other
graphical interfaces that exist on other systems. But, we've done some
things in Home which can only be done on the PlayStation 3
because we have a hard drive, because we have a consistent rendering
platform, and because every PS3 is the same, so we have that
predictability of clients' experience in the network that you wouldn't
get on other systems.

Having integrated some of
the network functionality into the machine from the beginning on the
design of PlayStation 3, it meant that every user would ideally be a
connected user. So it wasn't really an influence because we knew that
we could do some things in 3D better than other systems. That was our
goal: let's create the most rich media interface, let's create the one
with streaming video, let's create the one with complex environments.
I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

GS: It seems a bit like a Second Life-style idea, but done in a more user-friendly sort of way. I think that was the big limitation toward Second Life
being adopted by a lot of users. So is that a big part of this? Not
necessarily the comparison, but the casual nature of being with the
user?

PH: The unifying theme of Home
is entertainment, and the fact that users are connected together in a
3D world, and that they can communicate and cooperate together.
Everything about Home has to do with the PlayStation
experience, be it PlayStation games, or movies, or music. It's very
much focused on the digital entertainment that you would want to get
out of your PlayStation 3.

We're providing the
experience. We're providing the network of spaces. So that means we can
invest in making them look beautiful and making them look cool. As you
know, the approach that Second Life takes is that they just
provide the tools, and that they are entirely server-based. It's a very
different approach, and it's really inappropriate to make any direct
comparisons with Second Life since we're in a very different space.

Phil Harrison displaying Home at this year's GDC

GS: So there won't be too much user-created content aside from your avatar and your house at this stage?

PH:
We want to enable user-created content, but in a way that still
maintains high production values and a predictable experience for all
users.

GS: Then that's more of a future-looking thing?

PH: Well it's not so much for the future, but it's something that you have to be careful with. Second Life
brilliantly does user-created content, but that's all they do. They
don't do anything else other than that -- and I really like what Linden
Labs has done, so I shouldn't be critical -- but Home is much more high production-value, because we are able to control that channel much more effectively.

GS:
Does the Hall of Fame mean that there will be Xbox Live-like
Achievements in all games from now on, or is it still very much up to
developers?

PH: The Hall of Fame is
something that we are consulting with our third parties on at the
moment, as to what they want out of it. We've shared the concept with a
few of our third-party partners, and they all love it. They all think
it's very cool, and they all think it's a great innovation. But the
exact rules and policy about how it's supplied is something we're still
consulting with them about, and we'll come back to them with more
information.